Abstract

Theunis Roux's important book, The Politics of Principle: The First South African Constitutional Court, 1995-2005, is a tightly reasoned and wide-ranging assessment of the Constitutional Court's first decade. It sets out to explain what we must mean when we speak of our admiration for the court in these years (the 'Chaskalson Court', as Roux appropriately calls it), and then to trace the elements of the court's decisions that earned that admiration.